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The Golden Rule Of Business Payments

Even when I worked in a B2C company we worked with other businesses. We had vendors and those relationships were very important.

There are always things you can learn from those relationships and a few months ago a business owner I work with paid his invoice almost immediately.

I thanked him for it and he said:

I like to pay businesses how I like to be paid.

A simple statement, but it’s really stuck with me…

The Golden Rule: Pay Like You Want To Be Paid

Throughout my life I would say that I have almost always paid bills on time. It probably came from my upbringing or maybe it’s part of my personality.

I always hated having things hanging over my head and outstanding. I didn’t like having unpaid bills sitting around. I liked knowing that things were paid and taken care of for my mental state.

So even today I like to make sure all the GBW bills are paid. Part of that is with our writers. The relationships we have with our writers is very important. I want to make sure they are happy and have a desire to work with GBW.

That includes making sure they’re always paid on time (or ahead of time) no matter what happens.

On the flip side is getting paid. I will say that things have been very positive with GBW. 95% of the clients pay almost right away and that is great.

But you have that 5% and there are different ways of dealing with it.

But that’s not the point of the article.

The main point is that you kind of start to get a feeling. You try not to think differently about clients, but when someone isn’t paying thoughts start to creep into your head.

Paying It Forward With Business Payments

So this is just a little note and it’s kind of a reminder for myself too.

When you hold back on payments, even if you think you’re on time, it can have consequences. We’re all human. Even if you’re dealing with other businesses there are still people working in those businesses. And there can be hard feelings if you’re not paying as you would want to be paid.

And I think there is something to be said that good things come to you when you do good things. You can’t expect it to happen that way, but it really does seem to happen that way.

So pay others the way you would like to be paid.

Reminders

And one final thought on payments.

This is something that can be kind of awkward or at least it can be in your head. You want to keep up good relationships with your clients. You don’t want to assume the worst if a payment is later than normal.

What I’ve found is that reaching out with a reminder often results in payment. The person may be on vacation or out of the office. They may have actually not seen the email.

But if it becomes common then it’s something to pay attention to with a client. But don’t assume the worst right away. It’s okay to send a reminder and clients actually will thank you for the reminder.